From: Simon Marchi <simon.marchi@polymtl.ca>
To: Joel Brobecker <brobecker@adacore.com>
Cc: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>, Yao Qi <qiyaoltc@gmail.com>,
simon.marchi@ericsson.com, gdb-patches@sourceware.org
Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCEMENT] GDB 8.1 release branch created!
Date: Fri, 02 Feb 2018 16:27:00 -0000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <0d3105d4550cd3a68c9a3237bd556c08@polymtl.ca> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20180202155308.vx7hkemrjfmb27mn@adacore.com>
On 2018-02-02 10:53, Joel Brobecker wrote:
> Well, if it were me, I would stop using ChangeLog files with
> immediate effect.
>
> The purpose of ChangeLog files, as I understand it, is to describe
> the "what changed", and is aimed at people who download a given
> release and want to know what changed (because they do not have
> access to the version control information).
>
> While the above might have been essential 20 or 25 years ago,
> it is trivial for anyone today to have access to the change
> history of our program. Two options:
> - git clone our public repository; or...
> - ... if they don't want to use git, they can use the gitweb
> interface.
>
> I think that this is an acceptable way for us to provide the log
> of changes that were made.
>
> Currently, the situation is that we all pay a price in term of time
> wasted populating those files, and when we add the time collectively
> spent on those, I cannot imagine the few people's convenience would
> be worth that much effort.
>
> I vote for we stop using those ChangeLog files right now. We can
> still have them as part of the ChangeLog if people want -- although,
> I am also open to considering the pros and cons of keeping it,
> but I think they might not be worth the investiment either.
I agree about the time consumed producing ChangeLog entries. I have to
admit that it sometimes discourages me to do structural changes that
would affect a lot files/functions. I also feel like I'm filling some
administrative paperwork, which is not my favorite way of spending my
time.
Maintaining an internal port of GDB, one use I have for the ChangeLog is
to find what commit removed a given function. Let's say I rebase our
code and find out a function we use was removed, grepping for that
function would find the ChangeLog entry, leading me to the commit, which
helps in fixing the code. However, I recently discovered "git blame
--reverse", which allows to ask git about which commit removed a
particular line. So the ChangeLog is not really required for that use
case.
Since with git the whole history is available offline, I think the
usefulness of this kind of ChangeLogs is not as big as it used to be.
To be fair I'll also state a pro I see for the ChangeLog. When I write
the ChangeLog entry, it makes me look at my change a last time in
details and sometimes find some additional issues I might not have found
otherwise.
It might be worth starting a new thread to get the attention of
everybody to discuss this issue.
Simon
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2018-02-02 16:27 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 40+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
[not found] <announce.20180105041805.3FC35808E9@joel.gnat.com>
2018-01-16 17:31 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-01-16 19:02 ` Sergio Durigan Junior
2018-01-16 19:46 ` [PATCH] Fix warning on gdb/compile/compile.c (C++-ify "triplet_rx") Sergio Durigan Junior
2018-01-17 15:33 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-01-17 17:17 ` Simon Marchi
2018-01-17 23:07 ` Sergio Durigan Junior
2018-01-17 23:42 ` Simon Marchi
2018-01-17 23:48 ` Sergio Durigan Junior
2018-01-16 20:32 ` [PATCH] Fix unitialized warning on gdb/typeprint.c:whatis_exp Sergio Durigan Junior
2018-01-17 15:34 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-01-17 16:48 ` Pedro Alves
2018-01-17 18:03 ` Sergio Durigan Junior
2018-01-20 1:03 ` [PATCH] Fix segfault when using 'set print object on' + whatis <struct> Sergio Durigan Junior
2018-01-22 17:42 ` [PATCH v2] Fix segfault when using 'set print object on' + whatis <struct> (Re: [PATCH] Fix segfault when using 'set print object on' + whatis <struct>) Pedro Alves
2018-01-22 18:04 ` Sergio Durigan Junior
2018-01-22 19:53 ` Pedro Alves
2018-01-22 20:11 ` Sergio Durigan Junior
2018-01-16 20:36 ` [ANNOUNCEMENT] GDB 8.1 release branch created! Sergio Durigan Junior
2018-01-17 3:36 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-01-17 16:46 ` Sergio Durigan Junior
2018-01-17 11:04 ` Pedro Alves
2018-01-17 16:38 ` Sergio Durigan Junior
2018-01-17 16:46 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-01-17 16:50 ` Pedro Alves
2018-01-17 18:21 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-01-18 15:53 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-01-25 16:58 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-01-26 14:18 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-01-26 15:37 ` Simon Marchi
2018-01-26 18:53 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-01-27 16:42 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-02-01 15:12 ` Yao Qi
2018-02-01 16:27 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-02-01 16:51 ` Yao Qi
2018-02-01 17:33 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-02-01 21:32 ` Yao Qi
2018-02-02 15:23 ` Eli Zaretskii
2018-02-02 15:53 ` Joel Brobecker
2018-02-02 16:27 ` Simon Marchi [this message]
2018-02-02 17:42 ` Joseph Myers
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